world literatures and indigenous studies

In his contribution to an anthology of keywords for American cultural studies, Bruce Robbins registers an ambivalence at the heart of the term “public.” This ambivalence, Robbins writes, stems from the fact that the term’s “claim to represent the social whole has continued to bump up against evidence that large classes of people have been omitted from it.” Indeed, “public,” as a terminological category, requires universality. But in our contemporary historical situation – due to enduring social antagonisms, increasingly uneven distributions of resources and power, and ever-lengthening histories of exclusion and oppression – the fault lines of this never-universal are showing with renewed clarity, even as globalization continues to demand thinking

“Progress means: humanity emerges from its spellbound state no longer under the spell of progress as well, itself nature, by becoming aware of its own indigenousness to nature and by halting the mastery over nature through which nature continues its mastery.” — Theodor Adorno, “Progress” (p. 62)

On first reading, Proust's narrative in A la Recherche du temps perdu suggests that women are merely objects in Marcel's development. Despite extensive descriptions and metaphors, female characters seem to slip away from concrete definition, defying assured characterization. Moreover, most critical discussions of women in Proust compartmentalize female characters either as “Madonnas” (Marcel’s mother and grandmother) or “whores” (Odette, Gilberte, Albertine, Léa, Rachel). But how are women in Proust's fiction more than just objects? Given their centrality to the text, a reexamination of the ways in which Proust writes female characters is overdue.

Please consider submitting proposals for the 2018 American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies panel on "Theatre, Performance, and Slavery." This panel is sponsored by the ASECS Performance Studies Caucus; we are interested in work by scholars from a variety of national-linguistic traditions (French, Spanish, English, Portuguese, Dutch), as well as comparatists. ASECS 2018 will take place in Orlando, Florida, from March 22-25; deadline for receipt of proposals is September 15.

Kimberly Drake, the editor of the proposed book Critical Insights: Literature of Inequality, a collection of scholarly essays (under contract with Grey House Publishing/EBSCO), seeks contributions on literature, music, and film/television dealing with inequality and social injustice.

We invite contributors to submit papers for the next issue of the MASKA journal, concerning themes presented below or other related to the topics of migration, nomadism and life in motion. Only English-language texts will be accepted for this edition.

The interdisciplinary field of the environmental humanities offers new ways of considering tropical disasters. Hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis and similar incidents were once thought to be acts of God or isolated natural occurrences. New eco-critical approaches to the field, however, challenge the separation between human activity and environmental events.